I'm Political Economy editor at Forbes, editor of RealClearMarkets.com, plus a senior economic advisor to Toreador Research & Trading. I have book on how the economy works, Popular Economics: What LeBron James, the Rolling Stones and Downton Abbey Can Teach You About Economics that is set for release in April of 2015. I have a weekly column on Mondays at Forbes.com.

Rethinking Tom Brokaw's "Greatest Generation": Was It Really the Greatest?

My long-time friend and mentor Hall McAdams likes to tell the story of a business contact (McAdams and a brother-in-law ran and built Union Bank, now owned by Bank of America, into Arkansas’ 2nd largest banking institution) in Little Rock who had the same answer every time Hall would ask how he was. I’m perhaps paraphrasing, but his regular response was “I’m just happy to be working indoors.”

The reply came to mind during one of my most recent dinners with McAdams when I told him about an article from about 10 years ago by John Silber, former President of Boston University. In it Silber lamented society’s declining ability to memorize anything; his point being that technology of the cellphone and computer variety has made it so that everything we need is there for us at the push of a button. Silber noted that back before those technological advances, human memory was prodigious.

Thinking I’d come up with something interesting and insightful I mentioned Silber’s article, then added a story about Winston Churchill in one of The Last Lion books in which it was recounted that Churchill once memorized verbatim a full chapter in a book. I assumed McAdams would be impressed, and agree with me that declining memory was a sad tradeoff for technological advances.

Instead, he gave me a blank, somewhat haughty stare before happily reminding me that we do what we have to do to get by; basically that individuals are no different from businesses. Just as businesses constantly seek to produce as much as possible with as little labor as possible (yes, it is and should be the goal of commercial entities to constantly destroy jobs), so do we as individuals constantly shed skills that are no longer necessary to thrive in a constantly evolving world.

Thanks to grand advances in technology, prodigious memory is yesterday’s skill, and because it is, we can put always limited brain space to other, better uses. McAdams pointed out that most schools don’t teach Latin anymore, hence kids don’t know Latin, but it would be hard to make a compelling case that students are less economically or “life” viable as a result of this non-knowledge.

Considering American education today, though the statistics which show us falling behind in math might seem alarming, the hysteria surrounding them is probably way overdone. Not considered enough is the greater truth that as evidenced by the ever-increasing ability of Americans to create enormous wealth (figure we’ve been “falling behind” in math for decades), the need for mathematical knowledge has likely plummeted. At present we accept the basics taught in schools as essential, but it’s fair to at least ask the question if schooling on a global basis is hopelessly behind the times.

Non-Americans like to tweak Americans for mostly being illiterate in all languages not English, but in truth they’re complimenting us for not having wasted time learning something that would serve no major purpose. Here it should be stressed that learning another language may well be fun, it might boost one’s sophistication, but the main reason Americans aren’t fluent in numerous languages like so many other nationalities is that they’re already fluent in the one that matters most. That may sound harsh, but it’s undeniably true.

Returning to McAdams’ story of a business contact in Little Rock, it’s certainly the case that as the U.S. was once an agrarian society, working indoors surely was at one time the rare exception to the farming rule. So while politicians and their Keynesian economist enablers decry “job destruction”, the fact that economic evolution has freed so many Americans from outdoor work is not something that would bother most. No doubt the vast majority of Americans don’t know how to operate a backhoe, or a tractor for that matter, but far from something problematic, this loss of what was once essential knowledge speaks to a society that’s moved forward.

McAdams’ friend as mentioned felt relieved to be working indoors in an office setting, yet no doubt there was a time when “indoors” meant working in a factory; working on a farm no longer necessary. The very word “factory” speaks to increased productivity, and with the rise of factories Americans doubtless gained a great deal of new knowledge since forgotten about how to operate all manner of machinery. Economists and politicians who should know better lament the loss of factory jobs despite the fact that investors place a very low value on them, but the loss of knowledge about the machine on the way to “working at a desk” each day speaks to a continued and very positive evolution. Once again, productive businesses constantly shed labor inputs, while productive humans relentlessly shed unneeded knowledge.

Consider the automobile. Most adult males today wouldn’t have a clue about how to fix anything related to a car, yet a high percentage of their equivalent 40 years ago were no doubt more mechanically knowledgeable. Surely some male readers have had their mechanical skills questioned relative to a father or father in law, the questioning was doubtless done in a sarcastic manner, but the hidden truth is that this non-knowledge is similarly a compliment. Thanks to cars that are less and less prone to break down, mechanical understanding today is largely wasted effort.

Looking at the female experience, a labor room nurse once told me that childbirth with an epidural is a somewhat empty experience; that women should birth babies sans drugs. I nodded my head unthinkingly, but with time to reflect, what total nonsense. Why should a woman go through the hell that is childbirth if there are ways to reduce the agony? The birthing of children used to be far more life-threatening, yet mothers aren’t of lower quality today because a trip to the labor room doesn’t carry with it a high death rate. Just the same, if future mothers don’t know the true agony of childbirth this is a positive development, not a negative for women not living the “real experience.”

The origin of the advertisement escapes me, but recently I saw something along the lines of “We Cook So That You Don’t Have To”, and it’s arguably the case that with advances in food preparation, microwave technology and the proliferation of restaurants meant to serve myriad dietary wants, knowledge among mothers (and fathers for that matter) about how to cook will gradually decline. As a society we’ll be less skillful in the kitchen, but just as the mass production of clothing has made knowledge of how to knit and sew an irrelevance, so will it be that an understanding of how to bake cookies will be yesterday’s skill. We won’t be lesser individuals for “forgetting” how to do these things; instead this will speak to our constant evolution.

Post Your Comment

Post Your Reply

Forbes writers have the ability to call out member comments they find particularly interesting. Called-out comments are highlighted across the Forbes network. You'll be notified if your comment is called out.

You wrote:”If the definition of commercial productivity is constantly doing more with less, then it should be said that the definition of human evolution is constantly shedding knowledge so that new knowledge can be gained.”

Iam surprised that an editor would write such a long and ungainly blog. You were attempting to create an analogy between human beings shedding skills no longer necessary and economies shedding jobs no longer necessary however you never actually brought these two thoughts together and wandered off on to side issue intergenerational comparability. The reader is left wondering what the point of your blog was.

I think that the issue shedding jobs was your main point but you did not have the nerve to come out and say so or bring that thought to its logical conclusion. The problem with your analogy is three fold:

1) Old, useless jobs like those who make buggy whips are the ones being shed. The jobs that are being shed are those that sustained millions and entirely modern. Automobiles are as needed today as they were a generation ago but the jobs that have shed are exactly those jobs.

2) the jobs are not avtually being shed but being sent overseas. There are more manufacturing jobs today in the world than at any time in history, there are just fewer in the United States.

3) the jobs being shed are not being replaced with other, more modern jobs. You threw in a suggestion that 100 years ago a great many more people worked out of doors as opposed to in doors and that loss agricultural jobs was a blessing. This is a false analogy as there were in door jobs to replace the out of door jobs being lost. There is no such situation today. Jobs that are being lost are not being replaced.

This argument is all well and good until there is a major interruption of the progress of society…a Carrington event or our being on the losing side of a war. In that case we’ll wish we knew how to repair cars and do math.

dadoyle11 – How old is he? Good question. By the time my father was twenty-one he had finished two years of high school and had spent the previous three years as a Marine in the Pacific, fighting in one of the most vicious wars in history. The reason they’re the greatest generation is that they are the generation that fought the war and built the prosperity that followed.

Tamny in his ignorance makes a great point. Although he’s completely missed the picture, in his column can be seen a big truth. Tamny argues that the Greatest Generation wasn’t so great, but he inadvertently explains WHY the Greatest Generation was great. Their circumstances made them great.

My husband and I admire the work ethic and social ethics of the many immigrants in our community. Some Immigrant will work 12 hours a day every day on his feet in a hot kitchen. We loaned someone money one time, and she worked two jobs full time for a year to pay it back on her feet in a kitchen.

In their home countries their circumstances led to families sticking together where three or four generations would live in the same house or at least nearby. When they were young, they were cared for by their grandparents while their parents went to work. Some had to drop out of school at a young age to work. These circumstances instill in these people a work ethic and an appreciation for life.

But their American born children don’t come out so remarkable. Coddled by American society, they attend schools that would never do anything to bruise their self-esteem or cause them undue stress. Their babysitter is a television. They leave this system stupid and lazy.

The question is: is someone who works 12 hours a day every day with no break and never complains greater than someone a welfare mom on a couch playing video games and collecting food stamps?

In her book “How the West Was Lost”, the world’s sexiest economist Dambisa Moyo argues that the dumbing down of America is a very serious threat to the future of the nation. She includes some scary stuff in that book.

Mr. Tammy, you really need to understand a subject better before you write articles on it. It’s absolutely ridiculous to say that by not learning one subject, we leave more room for others, as if the brain had a certain memory limit, like an SD card in your camera. It’s been proven in many studies that the more you learn, the more you CAN learn. The more you exercise your brain, especially when it is young and developing, the more capacity for higher function and more learning it has. If we learn more mathematics when young, we become smarter at EVERYTHING. And language…there’s a subject you are so wrong on. When children learn multiple languages when young, (including music) their brain actually develops differently (read better) and they have higher functioning brains. So yes, Americans only learning English makes them dumber than their international counterparts; it doesn’t leave “more room” for other “stuff”. Your comment, “mechanical understanding today is largely wasted effort” amazes me. Are you serious? You are actually contradicting yourself. It takes mechanical understanding to design and build those things that actually create wealth (besides the fact that no matter how great today’s cars are, they still need to be maintained and repaired by people with “mechanical understanding”. If everyone only works at a desk, we completely become a service society, which will eventually collapse into itself since there won’t be any creators to serve anymore. Those who have “mechanical understanding” or have developed their brains with mathematics and language, will crawl out of the collapse and rebuild society. Your article is pure drivel. You need to get off your smart phone and do some serious study.

But in a way, you got it right. The GG played the cards they were dealt, really played them. We’re still trying to fill the inside straight, waiting for the high value Scrabble letters, waiting to run the suit. We aren’t playing, just moving our knights back and forth so it LOOKS like we’re doing something.

But while we’ve established a tempo of zero, the board, the game, continues to change, without us.

“Non-Americans like to tweak Americans for mostly being illiterate in all languages not English, but in truth they’re complimenting us for not having wasted time learning something that would serve no major purpose.”

No way. When you learn a foreign language you are also learning to understand and interact with a foreign culture. American companies loses billions every year because their executives, that do not understand Foreign languages, fail to understand Foreign cultures. That´s why Wal-Mart thinks that Germany or Brazil are exactly like Alabama and Florida and the they open Supercenters in the middle of nowhere that no one goes.

Wal-Mart had to buy local companies to have a presence in the Brazilian, their German operations were a total failure.

John is correct. People do what they have to do when there’s no one else to prop them up. As to the WWII guys being the “greatest” generation, I would disagree. I would call them the “greediest” generation for continually bellyaching for more benefits paid for by other people. Rather than pay attention to what their politicians were doing, they simply said “yes” to getting more and more. Now, their grandkids are going to pay the price.

As a baby boomer I sure don’t think they were the “greatest” generation, in fact, I thought mostly they were quite self-centered. This was the generation that women got to stay home remember, and while they were there they were busy propagating babies, lots of them. The boomers seem to get blamed for that but I’m not sure why, it’s not our fault our parents didn’t practice birth control. Other than that, this generation pretty much destroyed America by the late 1960s, early 1970s. LBJ instigated the Great Society that brought us the welfare state, Nixon got rid of the gold standard that brought us all our extreme inflation. He also started the war on drugs that turned us into a police state. Boomers were the first to “suffer” the 30-year mortgage. This generation also replaced boomer pensions with IRAs that flopped on the market and they are the ones who invented outsourcing. I was there at ITT in 1983 and they were already busy shipping our jobs out. That wasn’t the boomers doing it, it was the greatest. After they retired, they drove around during their quite lush retirements with bumper stickers on their Cadillac and RVs that said “We’re spending our children’s inheritance”

Good points, ones generally lost in the encouragement to solve the nation’s problems with more education without asking what kind, delivered how, what for, when and for how long. Don Tapscott raises some of these points in Grown Up Digital — what do kids need to know when they can look up state capitals (whatever the value knowing them ever had) in seconds. People talk about the problem of student debt without tying it to lifelong learning — if we need to continue to learn, why not make college two years — cut student debt in half! People need context — surely there is some advantage to knowing the Civil War came before World War II — and critical thinking skills, which, come to think of it, are prominently lacking in much of the education discussion.

You watch as many WW2 videos as I do, and you realize, on the contrary, the WW2 generation was “the stupidest generation”. Stupid, Nationalistic, patriotic, greedy, petty, bitter, jingoistic, imperialistic, genocidal, aggressive, and warlike.

And the catastrophe they left future generations with is a planet eaten up by states. States that are parasites and poxes upon humanity… mafia organizations with guns and radios and weapons, whitewashing their empires behind so much rhethoric that is just total garbage today.

If they had been the greatest generation, they all would of fought the state, instead of fought for it. Some of them did. The anarchists were right.